Although advertisements on the web pages may degrade your experience, our business certainly depends on them and we can only keep providing you high-quality research based articles as long as we can display ads on our pages.

To view this article, you can disable your ad blocker and refresh this page or simply login.

Once, it’s a fluke. Twice, it’s a coincidence. Three times, it’s a trend.

Three stocks that make up the Dow Jones Industrial Average 2 Minute (Dow Jones Indices:.DJI) have all publicly been at odds with the Chinese government in the past few months. The most recent was The Coca-Cola Company (NYSE:KO) with an odd GPS law, while Caterpillar Inc. (NYSE:CAT) purchased and then wrote off what now seems to have been a fictional company, and Alcoa Inc (NYSE:AA), which competes with government-owned aluminum producers, is now sort of a partner with the Chinese government.

Let’s take a closer look.

The backstories
This past week, Chinese authorities announced they they were investigating The Coca-Cola Company (NYSE:KO) employees for the improper use of GPS devices. The Chinese government keeps tight control on the use of this technology for reasons of “national security.” The Coca-Cola Company (NYSE:KO) uses GPS devices in their delivery trucks in an effort to increase efficiencies, and company officials are cooperating with Chinese authorities.

Last year, The Coca-Cola Company (NYSE:KO) controlled 16.6% of the soft-drink market in China, down from 17% the year before. Increasing efficiencies is likely a way for Coke to continue to pad the bottom line, even though market share is declining.

In late January, Caterpillar Inc. (NYSE:CAT) announced that it would be taking an $850 million write off because it found that a Chinese company it had purchased for just more than $650 million had fraudulently reported higher revenues in their books. Caterpillar Inc. (NYSE:CAT) said this fraud was a multiyear scheme that the Chinese company deliberately manufactured. The company produced and sold mining equipment, which is what caused Caterpillar Inc. (NYSE:CAT) to become interested in the organization in the first place, but apparently it wasn’t making quite the amount it reported.

And finally, we have Alcoa Inc (NYSE:AA). It started with the steel industry, and now it seems that have moved to aluminum: U.S. steel manufacturers have been bounded over the past 10 to 20 years, as Chinese companies dump cheap product on the markets. The price of steel fell to a price in which the U.S. producers could no longer compete, dramatically hurting the steel industry here at home.